Paramount's Brad Grey Wants to Build a TV Studio

I never ever had any problems with the fact that some tech today seams more advanced than Star Trek's. We cannot view Star Trek as our future, but mostly a thing like a future for a parallel universe. Things like the Eugenics Wars and WWIII made another development of tech possible for that universe so it is plausible. If we would have had a Eugenic War and we will have a WWIII (I hope not ...) rest assured that we will have a throw back from a tech point of view, tech will evolve differently.

^But the more detached ST gets from a plausible future, the further it drifts from the forward-looking, relevant science fiction it was intended to be, and the more it becomes an exercise in nostalgia and retro sci-fi like the way we see Flash Gordon today. ST is supposed to be about looking forward, not clinging to the past. The meaning should be more important than the trappings. So a wholesale reinvention, updating the concepts and tech while preserving the core characterizations and themes, would be more faithful to its intent than just perpetually clinging to the pulp-era technological trappings of the original.

Updating the tech? You make it sound like it's supposed to work. Too much tech gets in the way of drama and character. Simple ia always better and less is always more. The so called future tech of Enterprise will be laughable tomorrow as it is even today. Nothing stays the same and the things of today will probably be gone tomorrow in favor of something we can't possibly concieve of today. To me TOS was the most possible and plausible future of them all. GR's imagination was not less plausible than ours is.

Trek is ultimately a fictional universe, and it will always differ from the real one regardless, so sometimes it's a case of moving the goal posts with each new incarnation of it. As far as its tech is concerned, it can be solved with a retro-future approach or just rebooting it with new extrapolations from current-day tech (either way, it'll become outdated soon enough, IMO).

Updating the tech? You make it sound like it's supposed to work. Too much tech gets in the way of drama and character. Simple ia always better and less is always more. The so called future tech of Enterprise will be laughable tomorrow as it is even today. Nothing stays the same and the things of today will probably be gone tomorrow in favor of something we can't possibly concieve of today. To me TOS was the most possible and plausible future of them all. GR's imagination was not less plausible than ours is.

Click to expand...

It's still a show set in the future, you cannot have a future that ignores technological advances that have taken place in the present. Tech that will have advanced in the future you are portraying. Tech getting in the way? That's up to the writers and producers to ensure it doesn't, but it needs to be there and they have to get it right.

Stem cell treatments would have come in handy in the future don't you think? Will trek ignore it forever just because the original show from the 1960s had no idea it would ever exist?

Updating the tech? You make it sound like it's supposed to work. Too much tech gets in the way of drama and character. Simple ia always better and less is always more. The so called future tech of Enterprise will be laughable tomorrow as it is even today. Nothing stays the same and the things of today will probably be gone tomorrow in favor of something we can't possibly concieve of today. To me TOS was the most possible and plausible future of them all. GR's imagination was not less plausible than ours is.

Click to expand...

It's still a show set in the future, you cannot have a future that ignores technological advances that have taken place in the present. Tech that will have advanced in the future you are portraying. Tech getting in the way? That's up to the writers and producers to ensure it doesn't, but it needs to be there and they have to get it right.

Stem cell treatments would have come in handy in the future don't you think? Will trek ignore it forever just because the original show from the 1960s had no idea it would ever exist?

Click to expand...

There is no right way to get future tech. That is the point. the designers should at least endeavor to get it pleasing to the eye and aesthetically right first unless you want the Nostromo or prometheus bridge look which to me is not star Trek, and neither is the apple store warped design that they currently have. God is in the details.

I could see a future Star Trek series that revamps the technology to be more in line with modern expectations about the future. A more sentient ship that can make independent decisions (the USS Moya)? Uniforms that look like silk pajamas but can deflect energy weapons? Personal shield generators and heads-up displays for away teams?

If the tech is a continuity break with the past, that can be explained away by saying we're in the Abrams U. I guess keeping Nokia around made all the difference.

As for aesthetics, Apple Store works for me. Maybe they're getting a product placement fee from Apple. Just not grubby, that's all. But they should cool it with actual Nokia-style branding product placement. That's a jarring tone break. I want the anti-capitalist no-religion-too Federation!

I could see a future Star Trek series that revamps the technology to be more in line with modern expectations about the future. A more sentient ship that can make independent decisions (the USS Moya)? Uniforms that look like silk pajamas but can deflect energy weapons? Personal shield generators and heads-up displays for away teams?

If the tech is a continuity break with the past, that can be explained away by saying we're in the Abrams U. I guess keeping Nokia around made all the difference.

As for aesthetics, Apple Store works for me. Maybe they're getting a product placement fee from Apple. Just not grubby, that's all. But they should cool it with actual Nokia-style branding product placement. That's a jarring tone break. I want the anti-capitalist no-religion-too Federation!

Click to expand...

You can't have that with a series of movies based on TOS, which was somewhat capitalist in nature anyway. What we consider and accept as not being capitalist was what Roddenberry & Co. came up with for TNG. The thing is, if Roddenberry wanted us all to believe that capitalism had gone the way of the dodo, then he should have come up with a workable economic blueprint for the 24th century instead of slightly retconning Star Trek to say that nobody gets paid and replicators provide everything for us seemingly without charge. At least the Star Trek: Phase II episode 'To Serve All My Days' had a great idea of what the Federation economy was like based on what was already established in TOS by Roddenberry, Coon, Fontana & Gerrold.

Those examples are too old to be very useful. TV is changing fast, which may be in Star Trek's favor since broadcast is under extreme pressure to adapt to the future of narrowcasting exemplified by Amazon and Netflix (without having subscription revenues). Cable is also starting to feel the pressure.

The more the industry shifts towards narrowcasting (smaller audiences paying more for nichier content), the better it is for Star Trek which is in a niche (space opera) too small to work on broadcast and even basic cable is questionable anymore.

Premium cable might be able to swing it, but they'd be more likely to follow the Game of Thrones model and adapt some well-regarded novel series vs. going with a brand associated with free TV (not really the image Showtime wants to maintain - brand image being totally separate from the quality of the program itself.)

CBS is the most secure of all the broadcast networks, so they're under the least pressure to swing for the fences. Conversely, being in the more secure position, they might feel more free to experiment with new ways of delivering nichier content, like their collaboration with Amazon to produce Under the Dome (definitely genre, unlike Person of Interest, which is sci fi only under the most generous definition.)

Click to expand...

All I see in what CBS is doing with TV now is greed and attempting to hang on to an older demographic that's dying off, or in the case of reality TV shows, loosing interest as time passes. CBS needs to realize that, contrary to what they and the other networks believe, reality shows and cops shows are getting tiring and boring, and people are tuning out the networks because of this-the real reason ratings are falling, not what they believe and you believe.

If CBS and the other networks embraced things like variety shows and specials, a wider variety of sitcoms and dramas aside from police procedurals, retrospective specials like the I Love Lucy, Carol Burnett & Andy Griffith ones, and sci-fi/fantasy like Star Trek, they'd be getting enough people to watch TV in the large amounts that they claim aren't as big as they used to be. The problem is, they aren't, and Leslie Moonves is a greedy POS who hates science fiction & fantasy, and won't have a sci-fi or fantasy show on his network (yet owns the rights to Star Trek. )

Speaking of Star Trek, Paramount and Viacom should read the riot act to CBS Corporation/CBS Studios/CBS/The CW and make it clear that if they don't do something with the franchise, legal action and something else will be undertaken to force them to make a Star Trek TV show, or to get them to drop the franchise and let Paramount Pictures get it back in order to make a TV show by itself as Paramount TV. If CBS can revive Hawaii Five-O and remake Elementary (a remake which most people didn't ask for and which many are saying is inferior to the original British show Sherlock), then they can put a Star Trek show back on the air. The existence of fan shows like Starship Exeter, Phase II, Intrepid, Hidden Frontier and Star Trek Aurora shows that there still is a wide audience for Star Trek filmed as it used to be; if these shows can do what they do with donated funds, materials and labor, then CBS Corporation/CBS Studios/CBS/The CW can make a show with paid-for funds, materials, and labor just as it used to be in the past. All that's required is that they start to look past their balance sheets and start acting as the artistic concern that they say they are.

I could see a future Star Trek series that revamps the technology to be more in line with modern expectations about the future. A more sentient ship that can make independent decisions (the USS Moya)? Uniforms that look like silk pajamas but can deflect energy weapons? Personal shield generators and heads-up displays for away teams?

Click to expand...

The recent Canadian SF series Continuum had some of the best technological futurism I've ever seen on TV. The heroine has a smart uniform with all sorts of functions built into the fabric -- computer power and memory, color changing, animated graphics, a taser, etc. (Even invisibility, which doesn't make sense since it makes her bare head invisible too.) Plus she has contact-lens implants that project a heads-up display in her field of view and apparently include sensors and computing capability of their own. And this is just 65 years in the future. It makes ST's version of technology 250 or 350 years from now seem positively quaint.

If the tech is a continuity break with the past, that can be explained away by saying we're in the Abrams U.

Click to expand...

Not really, because that only branched off from the Prime reality in 2233. There are a lot of assumptions about earlier events that are still part of the Abramsverse and going to be rendered obsolete in time. We've already gone past the Eugenics Wars, there's no manned Earth-Saturn probe or interplanetary sleeper ships on the horizon, and it's only a few decades before WWIII (hopefully) doesn't happen as described. Sooner or later, if Trek is to avoid being just an exercise in nostalgia, it'll have to break from all its prior continuity and reinvent itself from the ground up. Keep the characters and their relationships, keep the values and ideals, keep the best ideas but remix them, but start the continuity fresh and weave in ideas that are as cutting-edge by today's standards as TOS was by 1960s standards.

As for aesthetics, Apple Store works for me. Maybe they're getting a product placement fee from Apple.

Click to expand...

That doesn't make sense, because there's no actual Apple logo, just an aesthetic that broadly resembles that of their stores.

But they should cool it with actual Nokia-style branding product placement. That's a jarring tone break.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately it's impossible to make a big-budget blockbuster movie these days without the funding that product placement brings. And as product placements go, Nokia wasn't a bad choice. They're a telecommunications company, something that will continue to be relevant in the future; and they're a corporation whose origins stretch back to 1865, nearly a century and a half, so it's not out of the question that they could still be around in 200-plus years. I suppose you could say the same about the Budweiser placement in Uhura's drink order; that brand has existed since 1876.

Sooner or later, if Trek is to avoid being just an exercise in nostalgia, it'll have to break from all its prior continuity and reinvent itself from the ground up. Keep the characters and their relationships, keep the values and ideals, keep the best ideas but remix them, but start the continuity fresh and weave in ideas that are as cutting-edge by today's standards as TOS was by 1960's standards.

Click to expand...

I like what you said here, Chris. Also, I'd shift the focus from the 23rd-24th centuries to the 25th and 26th centuries. Why? To give the Earth time to recover from World War III (if it's a nuclear conflict, it would take that long) or make said conflict a limited nuclear one that devastated Earth due to targeted pulse weapons that exploded in the upper atmosphere above a target, much like what happened in Red Dawn (2011 version), Dark Angel, and GoldenEye. Or, the conflict could be a bacteriological one of a limited but nasty duration similar to what was experienced in the movie version of V For Vendetta. As well, I'd get rid of the Eugenics Wars and the idea that Earth developed interplanetary spacecraft like the DY-100, as you said.

As for aesthetics, Apple Store works for me. Maybe they're getting a product placement fee from Apple.

Click to expand...

That doesn't make sense, because there's no actual Apple logo, just an aesthetic that broadly resembles that of their stores.

Click to expand...

Actually, the screen that Chekov was using looked a lot like the kinds of screens used on USN ships to display things (at least one of them). It's possible that Apple did in fact make the tech, but it's not acknowledged, just accepted?

But they should cool it with actual Nokia-style branding product placement. That's a jarring tone break.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately it's impossible to make a big-budget blockbuster movie these days without the funding that product placement brings. And as product placements go, Nokia wasn't a bad choice. They're a telecommunications company, something that will continue to be relevant in the future; and they're a corporation whose origins stretch back to 1865, nearly a century and a half, so it's not out of the question that they could still be around in 200-plus years. I suppose you could say the same about the Budweiser placement in Uhura's drink order; that brand has existed since 1876.

Click to expand...

I liked the product placement, but wished that the car the young Jim Kirk drives off a cliff was a brand new 2009 model and not a 1965 model Corvette-there no way any of those could have survived WWIII. A 2009 Corvette would have, however, enough that the car's an antique in the 2230's.

Also, I'd shift the focus from the 23rd-24th centuries to the 25th and 26th centuries. Why? To give the Earth time to recover from World War III (if it's a nuclear conflict, it would take that long) or make said conflict a limited nuclear one that devastated Earth due to targeted pulse weapons that exploded in the upper atmosphere above a target, much like what happened in Red Dawn (2011 version), Dark Angel, and GoldenEye.

Click to expand...

Well, I don't want to get into the specifics of story ideas here, since as a professional I need to avoid such things. But I'll just say that if you really are rebooting the franchise from the ground up, you don't have to accept that its history happened the same way. I mean, the whole idea is to break free of the dated assumptions that the franchise was originally based on. The idea of a nuclear war happening in our future seemed inevitable in the 1960s when TOS was made and the 1980s when TNG was made, but by today's standards it's kind of a dated assumption. An isolated nuclear attack by a rogue state like North Korea is still a possibility, but global-scale nuclear war between rival superpowers feels like the concern of an earlier generation, and a Trek reboot grounded in modern futurism would probably portray the global crisis of the 21st century more in terms of climate change, perhaps economic upheavals and corporate dystopias, maybe conflicts over human enhancement (so the Eugenics Wars would actually be a better fit than the "Post-Atomic Horror"), that sort of thing.

I liked the product placement, but wished that the car the young Jim Kirk drives off a cliff was a brand new 2009 model and not a 1965 model Corvette-there no way any of those could have survived WWIII. A 2009 Corvette would have, however, enough that the car's an antique in the 2230's.

Click to expand...

I don't follow your logic. Why would a 2009 Corvette be better able to survive a war than a well-maintained 1965 one? And it's not as if the war would've uniformly damaged every single part of the Earth's surface. Naturally some places would've been devastated and others largely unharmed. Plenty of antique cars and far older antiquities survived WWI and WWII. There are still ancient cathedrals standing in cities that were otherwise largely bombed to rubble in WWII.

I don't follow your logic. Why would a 2009 Corvette be better able to survive a war than a well-maintained 1965 one? And it's not as if the war would've uniformly damaged every single part of the Earth's surface. Naturally some places would've been devastated and others largely unharmed. Plenty of antique cars and far older antiquities survived WWI and WWII. There are still ancient cathedrals standing in cities that were otherwise largely bombed to rubble in WWII.

Click to expand...

A major city is the most likely place to see a 1965 Corvette be kept in a collection and have been targeted by a nuclear missile, is my reasoning. A factory on the outskirts of town that made said Corvettes would most likely be a place that survived said devastation; therefore, a 2009 or 2010 Corvette would have been the best survivor of a nuclear conflict (assuming said war wasn't a MAD conflict.)

A major city is the most likely place to see a 1965 Corvette be kept in a collection and have been targeted by a nuclear missile, is my reasoning.

Click to expand...

But clearly every major city on the planet wasn't destroyed. San Francisco, for example, still has some recognizable landmarks, as does London in the new movie. And WWIII had to be a limited nuclear exchange or humanity wouldn't have survived it.

Also, I don't agree with your premise. A lot of car collectors are wealthy sorts who live in the suburbs. Not to mention all the classic cars that tour with auto shows all over the place.

A factory on the outskirts of town that made said Corvettes would most likely be a place that survived said devastation; therefore, a 2009 or 2010 Corvette would have been the best survivor of a nuclear conflict (assuming said war wasn't a MAD conflict.)

Click to expand...

Why? The war wasn't in 2010. To all indications, it was somewhere around a decade before First Contact, i.e. the 2050s. So a 2009 car would also be an antique at the time.

All I see in what CBS is doing with TV now is greed and attempting to hang on to an older demographic that's dying off, or in the case of reality TV shows, loosing interest as time passes.

Click to expand...

All the broadcast networks are dinosaurs. CBS is just the fattest dinosaur. Eventually the same thing that's hitting the other networks - audiences are gravitating towards content and means of delivery that suits their specific tastes vs the old mass market model - will hit them.

It will just take longer. The question is, will they realize that the time is now to start experimenting with the formats that will carry them into the future? They do have the luxury of time and money. They shouldn't wait till they're in NBC's situation.

But greed is not the problem. If Netflix is inventing the future with shows like House of Cards, they are being motivated by greed as much as anyone or maybe competitiveness is a more accurate way of saying it. It's the Silicon Valley style, they want to win. That's what motivates them to go to work every day. Money is a way of keeping score, but it's the same thing in the end.

As for aesthetics, Apple Store works for me. Maybe they're getting a product placement fee from Apple.

Click to expand...

That doesn't make sense, because there's no actual Apple logo, just an aesthetic that broadly resembles that of their stores.

Click to expand...

That was a joke.

As for continuity, there's enough wiggle room for a TV series to do whatever they like. There's no solid proof that the Abrams U branched off due to Nero's incursion.

Uhura's line of dialogue proves nothing since she couldn't possibly know what happened. (The line does signal the writers' intent, but that's a fifth wall thing that doesn't need to be canon.) It's possible that both universes existed in parallel since the Big Bang, even if the differences between them were not something characters in either reality would notice. All it would take is one flap of the wings of one butterfly on one worth in the Andromeda Galaxy, and that would make them different.

A TV show doesn't need to announce whether they are in the Prime U or Abrams U. Most of the audience would have no idea it's even an issue.

And the problem with product placement is when they choose brands that don't make the best sense even if we assume capitalism survives into Kirk's day. I thought Star Trek was supposed to be some kind of future paradise. That's incompatible with the continuing existence of beer-flavored water. As for Nokia, considering the trouble they've had, I wouldn't place bets on them making it to the 23rd C.

Why would Netflix or CBS go with Star Trek if it a proven loser on tv? If I were Netflix, I wouldn't go with Star Trek being done by some but something just as good done by someone else who believes in what he's doing. A track record doesn't mean anything in this case. It winds up as well written crap again like most of the novels are. Political clout trumps artistic ability every time. We finally got rid of Berman, so anything is gonna seem good in comparison especially TOS on the big screen but the movie is gonna suck just like the last one less you like 'splosions and sex scenes for Joe six pack.

If I was CBS or the sci-fi channel I would go with another space opera that was similar to TOS but with another unique and original premise than something meant just for space cases and geeks and freaks or as Yvonne Fern put it, 'The media salvation for the internally inept.' Sci-fi keeps saying their looking for the next great space opera but the $1000 dollar suits are not doing anything about it when the could esaily ride Trek's '09's success directly to the bank with something else and not being under GR's shadow anymore. I think they're trying the next great time travel opera first to see how that goes which is what Netflix should do with space opera. Test out a few sci-fi feature pilots to see how they do and if they should go to series or not, but not Star Trek and definately not Enterprise. I'd rather see them do a series based on 2001 : A Space Odessy : The Search For David Bowman or any classic sci-fi novel that is due to get made and possibly go to series even another mini Dune. The last one sucked.

There's plenty of famous novels or remakes that could go to series potentially, but the guy in the $1000 suit at sly-fi is too lazy to do anything other than pick the same three or four ideas out of a hat from the same three or four writers and do that. He said so himself in an interview. Heck, the janitors working on Enterprise were wearing $1000 suits and fans have proven that they could do it all much better with no money. It's sad that the nature of power has to be so corrupt and greedy and political especially now since Star Trek is in competition with itself on free tv.

Why? The war wasn't in 2010. To all indications, it was somewhere around a decade before First Contact, i.e. the 2050s. So a 2009 car would also be an antique at the time.

Click to expand...

But it would be an antique that the Kirks would have truly come into contact with, as opposed to a 1965 Corvette. I think that Abrams, Orci, & Kurtzman used a '65 'Vette just because it was more iconic than a 2009 'Vette.

This being the same Yvonne Fern that gushed over GR in a book, but is now dissing the genre that he worked in. Yeah, I'll listen to her about this.

I'd rather be 'internally inept' than be tragically hip; at least, the TV shows are better and smarter than what the tragically hip think are cool and amazing (The Amazing Race? Big Brother? Survivor? This is all that CBS can put on the air that's a success? If I were running that company, the crime shows would be gone-the CSI shows &NCIS would be gone, the rest would stay until they finish their runs) and the reality shows would be completely eliminated. A mix of great sitcoms & drama similar to what was on CBS in the '70's and '80's would be what comprises the new schedule, followed by a new Star Trek show (on Monday night and in a good time slot for a change) with the crime shows relegated to other time slots that are just as good but that wouldn't crowd out or disadvantage the new Star Trek show (if Star Trek is such a legacy for CBS, then the suits in charge can fracking well treat it like one) and the other sci-fi shows would also be put on in advantageous positions so they wouldn't get low ratings and be canceled. Variety specials, retrospective specials (like the Carol Burnett one that garnered a ton of high ratings for the week it was on) and other similar shows would fill out the schedule, followed by a revived Saturday morning block with a Star Trek show as the most prominent part of it (again, if it's such a legacy...)

That's the way to run a network, and the idiots who run CBS/The CW/CBS Studios have forgotten that, obsessed as they are with the almighty buck. Maybe something like what I've proposed will bring the viewers back.

Why? The war wasn't in 2010. To all indications, it was somewhere around a decade before First Contact, i.e. the 2050s. So a 2009 car would also be an antique at the time.

Click to expand...

But it would be an antique that the Kirks would have truly come into contact with, as opposed to a 1965 Corvette.

Click to expand...

What????? Why? The war was in the 2050s. George Kirk obtained the car sometime prior to the 2230s. What is your reason for thinking that George would be more likely to come into contact with an automobile from four decades before the war and 220ish years before his own era than with an automobile from nine decades before the war and 270ish years before his own era? They'd both be prewar cars, they'd both have equal chances of surviving a nuclear war, and they'd both be very, very, very old by the time of the movie. So what is the difference?

I think that Abrams, Orci, & Kurtzman used a '65 'Vette just because it was more iconic than a 2009 'Vette.

Click to expand...

And isn't that exactly why the '65 would be more likely to survive to the 23rd century? If it's more iconic, then there would be more interest in acquiring, restoring, and preserving antiques of that model.

Why would Netflix or CBS go with Star Trek if it a proven loser on tv?

Click to expand...

How may IP brands can become the basis for a top ten box office hit movie? Especially if the one this summer is another top ten hit. There aren't many solid, evergreen brands like Star Trek around. Even lesser brands like Ironside and Charlie's Angels keep getting resurrected.

The main problem is how to make the best use of it on TV, considering that TV has become hostile territory to space opera and the TV business itself is in turmoil (which may represent more of an opportunity than a threat.)

If I were Netflix, I wouldn't go with Star Trek being done by some but something just as good done by someone else who believes in what he's doing.

Click to expand...

The reason Netflix or Amazon would want Star Trek is that it's one of the very few brands that can elicit this reaction in potentially millions of people: "Netflix is getting X? Holy shit! I gotta become a Netflix subscriber." Joe Blow Space Opera isn't going to do that, no matter how much he believes in what he's doing.